


matters of blood loss

by beanarie



Series: the past and pending [2]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Illness, silver and cats, which is a thing in this fandom because he literally is one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 09:14:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13567446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanarie/pseuds/beanarie
Summary: It's hard to avoid falling in love with John Silver. It is equally as hard to avoid throttling him until he loses consciousness.A continuation of my fic inspired byellel'sawesome premise.





	matters of blood loss

Silver's crutch disappears from its hiding spot sometime during the second night and turns up under his arm the next morning. James refrains from comment, serves breakfast on two chairs, and delays his own meal while he repairs the kitchen table. 

Silver is lost in contemplative silence. At one point James looks over and he's watching a pair of wild dogs cavort outside the window.

"They come 'round regularly," James says, feeling weighed down by the quiet. "Thomas talks of taking them on as a project, seeing if they're capable of being trained."

"Considered names for them?" 

"Caesar and Brutus." It comes out before he can think to stop himself. Silver smiles to himself and eases out of the chair.

"An emperor now." He shakes his head as he clears his plate. " _That's_ what you were."

It's the last they speak of history for some time. Despite Silver's initial fever-fueled insistence on laying everything to rest as soon as possible, his imposed convalescence appears to have changed his mind. He keeps primarily to himself, consuming every written word in the house. Despite the earlier talk of leaving, James comes to realize when he does disappear it isn't to escape. 

The beginning of a new cycle happens quietly, some time before James looks around and notices the world seems full of only his own presence, Silver having vanished without a trace. Each time the chills set in, James finds him tucked away in a dark corner of a room he does not consider the first, second or third choice, shaking and forcing air through clenched teeth. And each time he has to manhandle him into blankets and a chair in front of the hearth.

His frustration seeks to boil over quicker than the water in the kettle he monitors before pouring into a bucket for Silver's foot. "How are you so bad at this? It's confounding. Someone as obsessed with self-preservation as you should have at least some notion how to look after yourself."

"On w-what e-evidence are you basing that unnecessarily rude assessment?"

"Besides right now, or the preceding week?" Silver just glares, so he shrugs and takes a seat at the table with a sigh. This may be easier if they are not facing each other "Fine," he tells Silver's back. "She told me."

He and Thomas had a She, for the first few days after their reunion until they managed to clear the air and say her name. Now he and Silver have one. 

"She told you... what."

"After you fell when we were ambushed in Nassau harbor, she and I spent about two days thinking we'd never see you again. And, among other things, she revealed what you'd put yourself through for the months following Charles Town. Ignoring Dr. Howell, walking on an unhealed wound for hours on end, disappearing to suffer through the infection in isolation. Nothing you've shown me has conflicted with this account."

Silver is quiet for a very long time. "H-how did the subject come up?" 

James raises an eyebrow. Even though Silver can't see it, he'll hear it in his voice. "Through conversation."

"I'm to understand, to commemorate what everyone thought was my death, the only two people in the w-world who cared that I was gone swapped tales of my shortcomings?" 

_Some of the men cared as well,_ he thinks. It's just best not to mention the crew, ever, at all. "Her reaction to your loss came as a surprise. It was apparent I'd missed the creation of something... genuine. And I was curious as to how it started."

"You never asked me."

Fuck it. This still hurts. "I've seen how you handle questions of a sensitive nature."

Silver makes a noise he can't quite decipher. James could press the bruise a bit more, see what comes from it, but that feels somewhat ghoulish. Silver _is_ ailing.

They established something of a routine during his previous episode a few days ago--start out in the kitchen, then when the chills abate, settle on the couch in the parlor. Silver is already warming up, squinting from the headache and waiting for the willow bark tea to take effect. He lays the crutch down on the couch before settling in next to it. For his part, James tries to surreptitiously shove it closer to the far edge of the cushions, so it won't poke him quite as much. 

He's dozing fitfully when James leaves to do the washing up and still doing so when James returns with some water and a book about violin making. His temperature has clearly spiked, but he remains quiet. James routinely replaces the wet cloth on his forehead and keeps his reading to himself.

Three chapters in, Silver lets out a gasp like a drowning man. As James marks his place with a long blade of grass and puts the book aside, he hears the unmistakable sound of weeping. 

"He killed her," Silver says, and the temperature in the room drops. 

No.

"He killed her," he says again. James has heard this helpless sort of grief before. His cabin in the warship on the way from Charles Town to Tortuga, half-intelligible denials, cursing the men for taking his leg. _I do not want this,_ was the refrain.

James approaches the couch to touch tentative fingertips to Silver's quaking shoulder. "Be still now. You'll make yourself sick." He wants to know, but he also does not. What good would it do her now?

"Governor shot her down while I stood by and watched."

James frowns. "Wait." 

His expression twists into something ugly and angry as he growls and shoves against James. " _Fuck_ your gold. I fucking told you."

"Silver? Silver! Listen to me. No one died." Except Joji, Dooley, DeGroot... but, again, they aren't bringing up the crew. "You're not well. You're remembering things wrong."

"Splattered her brains on my face." He rubs at a spot above his left eye, then can't seem to stop, the motion becoming more and more urgent, like there's something caustic on his skin.

"Stop." James winds his fingers around Silver's hand and carefully pulls it away. He hasn't raved like this all week, and he's quite a bit hotter than he has been. Crediting himself for his foresight this morning, James lifts Silver with a hand under each arm and hauls him to the bathtub.

All the while, Silver cries. Brains on his face, brains on his face. With a flash of anger as he lowers Silver into the water, James remembers a man held a gun on a woman _he'd_ loved, spraying her actual brains on his actual face. The image shifts, one memory transposing on another. Miranda is on the deck with Woodes Rogers using her as bait.

His stomach drops. James would not have hesitated for even one second. He would not have expected anyone to understand while he worked to preserve some other priority in his efforts to save her. He would have thrown the cursed trunk at the governor's head and spirited her as far away as he could. And he would have struck down anyone who had so much as tried to persuade him to do anything else.

Fuck. _Fuck_.

Silver's head lolls precariously at the edge of the tub. James moves in closer to prevent him from slipping under and ends up with a hot forehead burning through the crook of his shoulder. Searching fingers pull at his shirt, leaving trails of bathwater dripping down his chest.

"Bring her back, Captain," Silver mumbles, his chest heaving with each labored breath. "You bring her back." In this moment, Silver believes him capable of descending into the underworld and wresting Madi from the clutches of Hades. There was a time when that faith had been the only thing keeping him going. Then it was withdrawn, he'd thought cruelly and without notice or reason. He thinks of Madi, he thinks of Miranda, he thinks of Thomas, and he's no longer certain.

James searches for the resentment that was so accessible only a few days ago. Finding himself at a loss, he sighs. "We were neither of us in our right mind, were we?"

All is quiet for a moment, then Silver sputters and jerks forward, gagging. James has to move quickly to make sure he doesn't vomit in the water so it lands... yes, of course. All over his trousers.

~

Dusty and aching, with a quantity of insect bites that would boggle the mind if he spared the energy to put an actual number on it, Thomas sets the horse back up in the barn with food and water. On his way out, he makes out a dark form in a stark white nightshirt half sprawled, half leaned against the wall.

"Mr. Silver?" he says. "John?" No response. Thomas clears his throat. "You there!" Silver gives a start, exhaling audibly. Thomas comes to a stop a respectful distance away, mindful of the possible combination of delirium and hidden weapons. When the glittering gaze fixes on him he says, "Do you know me, sir?"

"By reputation more than personal acquaintance." He sounds coherent enough, yet the almost wistful tone is reminiscent of when Miranda just ended a stretch of too much time with his father, or when James's obligations forced him to skip more than one night's sleep. Not drunk but decidedly off.

As Silver appears to have his wits, Thomas takes a few steps closer. "It is a lovely evening, but there are several more comfortable places to rest inside the house. Could I give you a hand?"

Silver uses the heel of one hand to dig into his temple and barks out a sort of chuckle. "Prefer a leg, if you have one to spare."

The laugh that startles out of Thomas is swiftly stifled. James told him about a former member of their crew and the gruesome end he came to after treading these waters. "What brought you out here?"

Silver's struggles to get upright cause a curtain of recently wet hair to obscure his face. He grunts and shoves it aside. "Bit muddled. I think-" He groans loudly as he accepts Thomas's hand up. "-escape and fresh air vied for supremacy. Alas, the cow would not oblige either goal."

"Well, now that I've returned the horse, I'll thank you to leave her be. Savannah has earned a long rest."

"Savannah." Silver grabs his crutch from Thomas's hand without comment and leans heavily on his side, the unnatural heat from his body impossible to miss but bearable for the short distance to the house. Thomas expects that to be all until, "You know, I nearly ended up there."

"At the plantation?"

"Hm." Silver nods a bit and says nothing more, too busy concentrating on helping Thomas help him into the house. 

They find James in the parlor, chaos behind his eyes springing to new life as he takes in the journey Silver went on while his back was turned. "I was making _tea_ ," he says. Poor thing.

His trousers hang over the ottoman. His shirt was on the banister when they came in. Thomas's gaze drifts down towards James's knees and he quickly brings it back up. He isn't going to say a thing, at least not until after Silver is sorted. "Why don't you bring the tea out here while I help Mr. Silver return to the couch?"

James stares for a moment and blinks, clearly done in. He glances at Silver, who isn't focused on much besides his struggle to move forward, then departs with a nod.

~

Thomas looks up at the ceiling as his head bobs gently like a cork in a calm sea. There are fingers in his filthy hair and a brawny, freckled arm over his collarbone. "This has been quite the trial for you, hasn't it?"

The stomach he's using as a pillow rewards him with a mildly offended rumble.

"James, you're wearing my drawers as breeches."

James huffs out a weary laugh and tweaks Thomas's nose. "Are you scandalized?"

"Dreadfully."

They are both too tired for much of anything, so they just lie there, respiration synchronizing, and wait for sleep.

"I think I might owe John fucking Silver an apology."

Thomas pats the hand resting on his heart. "Turning his name into an epithet is always a good place to start."

The last moment before he drops off he hears, "Thank you, for this. For your help. He is... what he is, but I'm not ready for a world without him in it."

~

The first time Thomas touches Silver when he isn't burning up with fever, a simple hand to the shoulder, Silver leans in for a moment before catching himself and disengaging. That is what sets Thomas's interest in stone, the sense that Silver wants something he does not think he has the right to even consider. Well. That, and how he looks after he trimmed his overgrowth of beard.

Thanks to the Peruvian bark, Silver's next episode passed mildly and uneventfully, and the one that followed was barely noticeable. James returns from a trip to the other estates and he calls Silver outside to reveal a new acquisition. Two used swords.

"Your endurance is shit," he announces.

Silver looks to the left of the porch, then to the right, his shoulders rolling back as his chest rises with a deeply aggrieved sigh. The display is quite fetching. He wears his affront very well. 

He glances at Thomas. "Did he do this to you as well?"

"I-"

"Our first month at this place, Thomas rebuilt the barn." Under James's direction, but, you know, fine. "Yesterday you walked out there, and I can swear I heard you wheeze."

Eyes widening with indignation, Silver opens his mouth to scoff, but some internal thought makes him stop and regulate his expression. By the time he reaches James on the grass, he looks almost smug. "How long have you been waiting to attack me with a deadly weapon? Be honest."

Baring his teeth, James tosses him the second sword.

As Silver familiarizes himself with the grip and feel of the blade, Thomas favors James with a look. _I trust you implicitly, but still._

James holds up one hand and wiggles an eyebrow. _I wouldn't gut your new crush right in front of you. Come now._

Now Thomas is the affronted one, but he keeps it to himself and settles in to watch.

~ 

Halfway through their supply of Peruvian bark, Silver remains an odd sort of presence in their space. He reads books, he starts arguments with James not over history but petty nonsense like which constellation is visible when they are looking at the night sky. He does cook, occasionally, but apart from that, he does not contribute to the household in any significant way. He offered his assistance haggling with merchants and the other estate owners. James declined and Thomas thinks he knows why. Well, he has a few theories, which he would share if asked. No one has asked.

Upon entering the house, Thomas dropped everything in the kitchen and gone to the parlor. Yet here he is, back in the kitchen, having finished writing the letter he composed in his head earlier today while away from ink and paper, and the fish is gone. 

Wait, not gone. Cleaned, gutted, and packed in salt with the rest.

Something tells him to try the barn. He catches Silver quite literally red-handed, feeding feral cats from a cloth full of fish guts. "They'll sort out the vermin issue in here," he says without turning his head.

"Did you prepare the fish?" As expected, there is no answer. Thomas smiles. "John Silver, master of hidden talents."

They watch a spotty little thing attack a bug-eyed fish head, then there is nothing left in Silver's hand but pungent, fragile bones. "That hasn't been my name for very long," he says as he folds up the cloth and they start toward the house. "Only the last few years."

"Is there something else we should be calling you?"

Clearly thrown by the question, he appears to think about it. "No," he decides.

Behind them the cats yowl, probably fighting over their gifts. Will no one ever learn to share? "They made me take a different name at the plantation. For anonymity's sake."

"You picked James, did you not?"

"The choice was out of my hands, actually." Thomas spent quite a long period unwell himself when he first came to Georgia, the long voyage having not suited him at all after everything he'd been through at Bedlam. One thing he can give his second prison; they allowed him as much time as he needed to recover. That magnanimity was used later as emotional leverage. They'd treated him so well. Didn't he want to repay their kindness? Didn't he want to pick up a hoe and work for the good of the community? Anyway, there's a reason James is in charge of the crops while Thomas takes care of the animals. "And what they gave me was John."

After that, Thomas has company on his twice weekly fishing expeditions. 

~

Thomas continues risking a casual, non-lingering touch to an innocuous part of Silver's body every so often. Tugging a lock of coiling hair ends up causing the most dramatic--and arguably most delayed--reaction.

His expression one of cultivated blankness, Silver says nothing in the moment, instead busying himself with detangling the fish he just caught and putting it with the other, smaller, two that Thomas already contributed.

Four additional fish have weighed down their journey, they've packed up their things, and they're well on their way back, when Silver disturbs the sounds of nature. "You should know, I became aware of the plantation long before anyone else."

The pack slips down Thomas's shoulder and he slows his stride to adjust before continuing on. Silver keeps his pace steady and his gaze forward.

"I knew where you were for months and I did not share it with James until I needed him out of the way."

Thomas just barely refrains from rolling his eyes skyward. When Silver revealed that he'd stolen James's gold, he waited until they were starving and on the brink of losing everything because they could not see eye to eye. The next thing they knew they were murdering sharks to feed on their carcasses. _This_ is simple self-sabotage. How banal. How disappointing. "I expect most people would be enraged by that."

Silver stops in place. He looks at Thomas finally, his eyes the very picture of stillness. "Are you not?"

Thomas taps his chin, trying to come up with the appropriate term. "My subconscious seems to have granted you a sort of... pardon by proxy." Silver blinks, mystified. If only he knew how much Thomas wants to kiss that look off his furry face. "Righteous anger, given that we were not acquainted at the time, would be somewhat hypocritical. I should have to take on the fury of every anonymous individual you've ever wronged, since we were all the same to you. And I cannot shoulder the burden of your nameless victims while ignoring James's, given that many of them were literally the same." Having James with him, tender and flawed and _breathing_ trumps everything, but their first year was a mess. He doesn't care to duplicate the experience.

They're standing very close now. People often allow Thomas to box them in. His face is so trustworthy, his manners exemplary, that their guard simply never comes up. It's rare that he takes full advantage. Silver, whose guard has not been down a moment since Thomas met him, shows no sign of wanting to run off. "You're a pirate. Pirates commit horrible acts, so it's hard to find news of your having been a bastard all that revelatory." Thomas risks reaching out, laying a hand on his cheek. To his delight, Silver leans in. "James is entitled to take your actions personally, and I daresay he's learning to move on. As for me, I am very particular about the grievances for which I seek recompense. And right now, I am not in the market."

Thomas pulls him in. The lack of resistance is an unexpected surprise that makes him want to start out bold, but he leaves things barely on the other side of chaste. He parts his lips just enough for them to share a single breath, he allows his face one contented rub against that dark fur, and he backs off.

Silver is thinking. He does that a lot.

~

James drops an envelope on the empty space on the couch next to Silver, then stands there. The air of expectation is what draws Thomas's interest from the other side of the room.

Silver looks up from his book and glances at the source of the soft sound. "Should I know what that is?"

"I sent a letter to Nassau, well, two letters. One for the wife of Governor Featherstone and one to be forwarded... somewhere else." James nods toward the envelope. "This is the response that arrived today."

Thomas tries not to stare. He was not included in this plot.

Silver returns to his book. An hour later, he retires to the barn to see to his cats. The letter is still on the couch where James deposited it.

The next time Thomas glances at the couch, when he's finished darning socks for the evening and believes he is due a decent supper for it, the letter has disappeared. Silver has not returned to the room. Thomas would have noticed.

James waits until the meal is over to present the letter again, right next to Silver's dirty plate and cutlery. 

"I don't recognize the hand," Silver says, veneer of casual irritation doing such a poor job of covering a lie Thomas feels bad for him.

"Well." James strolls to the hearth. "Then it must be worthless." He holds the letter near the flames.

Silver begins the process of clearing the table, pointedly ignoring him.

James shrugs and makes to feed the letter to the fire.

"Jesus," Silver spits out. Amid the clatter of crockery, he launches himself forward to rip it from his hand.

"Forever making things a thousand fucking times more complicated than they need to be," James mutters. He returns to the table and takes a sip of tea, his eyes over the rim of the cup looking extremely self-satisfied.

Thomas restrains an inappropriately timed smile. He knows they don't communicate exclusively in swears and insults. It only feels like they do. 

Frozen in front of the hearth, Silver holds the letter against his chest, curled loosely in his fingers. His grip looks almost casual, but he'd like as not slit the throat of anyone who tried to take it from him. His eyes have widened just enough to be recognizable as panic. "What did you say to her? Tell me you didn't-"

"I told her you're here, with us. And you've amassed a cadre of feral disciples, as per usual. That is all. You have my word."

"I left without informing her," he says in a small voice.

"Of course you did."

"Well, she was scarcely speaking to me anyway! I... had an idea, which-"

"Ended in a deathly illness," Thomas supplied.

"-was thwarted by a barrier I did not foresee," Silver finishes as though no one had spoken.

Thomas tries very hard to not look amused. "Are you going to read it?"

Silver shoves the letter in his shirt. By mutual silent agreement, James and Thomas take pity and move on to talk of the other things, like the local priest, a money-grubbing sort who Thomas has been trying to discredit for months, and the mortally wounded gopher left by one of Silver's cats that used the last scrap of its life-force to skitter inside the house and expire under the couch.

~

Going soft is inevitable after several years away from battlefields and scheming, prizes and mutinies. Still, James is distantly irritated when Silver lands a cut on his forearm and the sensation of skin and tissue separating from itself makes him drop his secondhand sword.

"Ow," he says. Wiggling his fingers sends tendrils of fire down his arm, but nothing too bad. There's barely any blood. He pauses from the nostalgia of the pain just as much as from the pain itself. Were this an actual fight, the wound would not have even registered until it was all over.

"Oh, shit." Silver lets his sword join its mate on the ground. His gaze is strangely unfocused. "That was..." His hand leaks warmth through James's bicep. He can feel it spreading throughout his system like an infection. "Not intentional. I... _fuck_. James?"

"Hm?" He draws back minutely. Silver has not been sick in quite some time, but that gulp makes him leery just the same.

"I- I'm sorry. I'm sorry." There's a callused hand at the back of his neck, lips mashing against his own, and this is not far from what he thought it would feel like, if he's honest. It's very much like being plunged under water--the way every noise from their surroundings vanishes, the way his chest burns, threatening to split wide open.

All the same, as he comes back for air, James lets it out in a sigh. "You transparent fuck."

Silver tries to laugh it off. "What?"

"How many weeks have you been here? Yet it's now, when her shadow enters the house, that you make your move." Fondness takes the sharpness out of his words because he understands. A distant, exasperated voice insists he pick up a sword, either sword, and run Silver through, but he understands.

"Madi has nothing to do with-"

Whether he means it to be or not, it's a lie and James kisses him again so he doesn't finish. "Have you ever had something good in your life," he asks in a hushed voice, "that you didn't feel the need to destroy?"

Silver's expression is cautiously neutral, as though he can't decide between confidence and confusion. "Has anyone?" he asks in the same tone. _Have you?_

An exasperated laugh fights its way out and he doesn't try to stifle it. " _Yes_." The question of where Silver came from stopped mattering a long time ago. More important is the clear and objective fact that the foundation upon which he was built had as much structural integrity as one of Randall's stews. He is only just learning that his perspective is not universal, that what he thought was wisdom has been something else all along.

He covers either side of Silver's face with his hands, stroking with his thumbs. He scans stormy blue eyes, waiting for some sign that Silver has finally begun to understand. "Yes," he says again.

~

Dawn is still breaking when James drifts downstairs to a curious bustling in the kitchen. Breakfast is not until after the morning chores, but Thomas, his hair mussed from sleep, is seated at the table amid plates of bread with grapes and sliced figs while Silver presides over a pot of porridge. 

This sort of gesture can only mean one thing. "You're leaving."

Silver looks intently at the bubbling contents of the pot he stirs for a moment, exhaling loudly before he nods. "My original plan went the way of the Walrus," he says, "but I cannot let this be our end. I owe it to Madi to keep trying."

"You still have not read the letter, have you?" Thomas asks.

"I read the first paragraph in depth and gave the rest a cursory glance. It literally does not mention me once." He lifts his hand as they protest. "God's honest truth! She's just nattering on about Cervantes. It's wholly directed at James. She clearly missed him."

"In that case, I'll fucking take it back, thank you." James plucks the letter from the air before it can hit his chest.

"What she has to say to me is for me, not to be filtered through intermediaries." Silver furrows his brow, the uncertainty he allows to show making him look very young all of a sudden. "I _believe_. There's a chance she said nothing because there is nothing to say."

James runs a finger around the perimeter of the letter and puts it away along with the knowledge that Madi missed him. That will be dealt with another day. "Even if success were possible, I cannot imagine she'd want you around _all_ the time." Thomas smacks his bandaged arm, then lightly pats his apology when James hisses. "You can't deny, he is quite irritating."

Thomas hums. "Good thing we've no plans to go anywhere. And I'm confident he could find his way back here if he cared to."

Silver ducks his head in a pitiful attempt to hide that he's gone pink, coughing as he drops a bowl for each of them on the table. "Suppose I could."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [matters of blood loss [PODFIC]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14468316) by [beanarie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanarie/pseuds/beanarie), [ponytailflint (inkgeek)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkgeek/pseuds/ponytailflint)




End file.
